


One Day Out From Stardust City

by Blake C Stacey (BlakeStacey)



Category: Star Trek: Picard
Genre: Gen, Medium-Yield Picard Speech, Missing Scene, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-09
Updated: 2020-10-09
Packaged: 2021-03-08 03:48:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,051
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26909164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlakeStacey/pseuds/Blake%20C%20Stacey
Summary: It's easy to bump into someone at breakfast on a spaceship.
Kudos: 10





	One Day Out From Stardust City

Cristóbal Rios emerged from the holodeck, his football under his arm and the sweat of his morning workout about him. Heading for the galley, he sang idly to himself, "She'll take you for a ride on a slow boat to Rigel—" Rounding the corner, he saw Jean-Luc Picard sitting at the table by the replicator, taking the first bite out of a slice of protein-supplemented toast with apricot preserves.

Picard swallowed and said "good morning" as though he meant it.

"Good morning," Rios repeated back. He stepped to the replicator and gave the control panel a tap. "Tea. Darjeeling. Cold-brew."

Tea glass in one hand, football in the other, Rios nudged an empty chair with his foot and slid into the space across the table from Picard.

"One day out from Freecloud at present speed," Rios said. "Want to make plans for when we arrive, or are you not the type to do that on an empty stomach?"

"I have some ideas," Picard said. "Once everyone is alert, I suggest we convene on the holodeck for an all-hands meeting."

Rios gulped down his tea. "Fair enough. You know," he ventured, "I'm a bit surprised. Freecloud isn't the kind of place that Fleet types like to barge into. But if you don't mind my saying so, you seem..."

"A touch eager?" Picard suggested.

"A touch eager."

"Fleet people," Rios went on, "especially flag officers, and _especially_ desk pilots in the Sol system, get this weird little tic when they pay in cash. Either they're accustomed to a planet of parkland, or they're up on a starbase having all their needs met." He waved in the direction of the replicator. "Touching latinum is something like slumming it for them, and they get this odd look, as though they're getting away with a cultural transgression. But Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, former captain of the Enterprise, hasn't just been out in the cold and the black, he's been out among the _uncivilized_."

Picard folded his hands pleasantly over his now-empty breakfast plate. "I can neither confirm nor deny where I have traveled in the name of duty. Or whether the Nausicaans involved still bear a grudge."

Rios smiled. "So, then. Why is the hero of the Federation taking on a mission with a ragtag team of misfits, instead of a vessel at least Excelsior-class?"

"You must not watch the evening news," Picard said. "But you should know that I _did_ go to Starfleet Command, and they threw fourteen planets in my face."

"Ouch?"

Picard explained, "I was reminded that after the attack on Mars, fourteen planets declared that they would leave the Federation if we carried on with the mission to rescue the Romulans."

"How does a planet declare anything? Does a voice, like, come out of a volcano?"

"I suppose I could have told them what I said at the time. That it's the job of the Federation Council to roll the logs and scratch the backs and soothe the egos whenever delegates get petulant. Or that citizens from all fourteen of those worlds had joined the rescue mission and gave their lives when Mars burned, and their sacrifices ought not to be thrown away lightly."

"But," Rios guessed, "that didn't work then. And 'he will triumph who knows when to fight and when not to fight', I guess?"

Picard leaned back in his chair. "There were demonstrations on all those worlds. Thousands marched to demand that the rescue continue. On Antares, they seized the House of Commons and declared that if the planetary government left the Federation, they would secede from _it_. And I ... I let them down. I made the call not to fight. The Federation took the easy path, and now the Galaxy has to live with the consequences."

"And retired Admiral Picard is part of the Galaxy."

"Tautologically true. But I take your meaning."

Rios slapped his knee, stood and picked up his empty glass. "Orange juice?" he offered.

The dematerialization cycle broke down the glass, and in its place, threads of light shaped a carafe of juice with two small cups beside it.

Returning to the table, Rios said, "The holodeck is ready to be reset to your chateau program. Or you can use the exercise mode, if you'd like."

"Hard as it may be to imagine, I suspect my days of futsal are behind me."

"Let me guess. At the Academy, you did ... fencing and archery?"

"Also cross-country skiing. And my first year, I put considerable energy into track and field, in order to catch the eye of a certain, rather charming Vulcan enby."

Rios laughed. "Ah, the undoing of better men than we."

Sipping his orange juice more measuredly than he had the tea, Rios said, "Makes you think, though — Starfleet Academy? Actually pretty impressive. And sometimes it's the little things that tell, like being able to find an exercise regimen for each student that they're willing to stick with until they grow to like it."

"Centuries of practice," Picard pointed out, "have to lead to tangible benefits here and there."

"Man, a thousand years ago, you'd have to cross a continent to find a university just to learn long division. Even when we got up and started walking on the Moon, a preteen learning calculus would have been a diamond in the rough. And it's not like our brains have gotten more wrinkles. We've just, you know, _learned_." He splashed more juice from the carafe into his cup. "And as math goes, so goes history. Storming the House of Commons! What I would have given to be on Antares that day."

"You're right," said Picard. "We _have_ learned, now and then. A lot of us have it pretty damn well. And sometimes, a few among us look around and realize just what advantages we have received, and they discover that the principles we stamp on every Federation plaque aren't just pretty words. They recognize that their advantages give them the means to fight, and that the principles are worth fighting _for_. Those are the citizens who storm the House of Commons, and those are the people I always wanted beside me on the bridge of a starship."

He rose to his feet.

"I just wish it hadn't taken me so long to see that. Good morning, captain."

**Author's Note:**

> A few weeks back, I got into an idle chit-chat about whether or not it was silly that TNG-era characters never had more than one document on each PADD. My thought was that if I had the ability to get an arbitrarily large number of e-readers out of a magic cabinet in the wall, I might cover my desk with them, so I could spread out and have multiple documents open simultaneously. Then, when I'm done, they go back in the reclamator so their molecules can be turned into shoes.
> 
> Yes, it probably _was_ a failure of imagination on the show-makers' part, but they went with something that looked "natural" to them, and by the same token it might be an accurate portrayal of _somebody's_ workflow, for purely psychological reasons.
> 
> Likewise, when the ensign says "here's today's alpha-shift log" and hands the lieutenant a physical PADD with only one document, there's no distraction. The salience of the document is underlined. The 1,001 diversions and focus-destroying temptations of a smartphone simply don't exist.
> 
> The characters of TNG generally seem to have a healthier relationship to information technology than the real Earth of 2020. The Doylist explanation is probably that the show's creators were making a mostly optimistic series for network TV and wouldn't have gone with worst-case scenarios, even the grimmer takes that had already been imagined (TNG came a few years after classic cyberpunk started). But I like to speculate: What's the in-universe, Watsonian explanation?
> 
> It's like those moments in the _Enterprise_ -D hallways when a little kid talks about their calculus lesson. The Doylist take is that they threw in something science-y and maybe wanted the vibe that everyone on the ship is really well supplied with smartness. A Watsonian take? Perhaps centuries of practical experimentation have actually brought progress in educational techniques, and by understanding psychology better, we can teach better.


End file.
